This section returns to the subject of certain topics we looked at in the previous section on Linguistics, so if you haven’t read that already it would probably help to go take a look at it now.
The myth and literature isn’t always clear about who is or isn’t a divine being. Although the scribes might sometimes tell us that someone is a god or goddess – like Néit, Dían Cécht, Manannán mac Lir, Brigit, the Dagda, the Morrígan, or Badb – matters aren’t always as straightforward as we might hope them to be. We have no real reason to suppose that any of these claims were false, because there’s no real reason for the scribes to have lied here, but it’s always nice to find some degree of confirmation that can help reinforce things. As we’ve seen, delving into the linguistic side of things can occasionally help in confirming the likelihood of these claims, as in the case of the Dagda, whose own name explicitly refers to the fact of his divinity: He is ‘the Good God,’ or (perhaps) ‘the God of the Good/Noble Ones.’ Either way, the clue is in the name.
Each of the figures we’ve just named here can also be described as member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or ‘the Peoples of the Goddess *Danu,‘38 and it’s often assumed that this is a label that describes a single pantheon – ‘the gods of Ireland.’ Based on this identification, then, it seems reasonable to conclude that anyone who might be described as a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann must, therefore, be a deity of some sort.
Unfortunately, however, this isn’t quite the case. In the previous pages we’ve mentioned a few deities who are never described as members of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and many of the names we’ve identified here have been gleaned from the ogam inscriptions, where a certain type of formula that’s used in naming the individual who’s being commemorated on the stone may include an ancestral deity. In one case, the name – Loígde, or LOGIDDEAS – shows us that she is the ‘Calf Goddess,’ so just as we’ve seen with the Dagda, her name clearly states her divinity. Besides Loígde, we could also add Duibne (DOVINIA), Erc (ERCIAS), and Rethech (RITTAVVECAS), for example, who are all featured in ogam inscriptions that use the same sort of formula as the one Loigde appears in, and each of these can be linked with at least one historically attested population group in the early Irish landscape. A few examples from these ogam inscriptions, like AINIA (Áine), NUADAT (? Núadu), CORIBIRI (Cairbre), and LUGUNI (Luigne, referring to the ‘descendants of Lug’) could represent deities who did end up being described as members of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but we can’t be as certain about this. If it does, however, this fact in itself would seem to reinforce the idea of their likely divinity, through their links with certain kindreds, and certain locales, as divine ancestors.
There are other names we could add to these ‘non-Tuatha Dé Danann’ deities, like the so-called sovereignty goddesses of Ireland, who might include Medb, Mór Mumain, Áine, Mugain, Ruithchern (or Suithchern), Eithne, and Mongfind, for example. Figures such as Macha may be thought of as bridging the divide between Tuatha Dé Danann and non-Tuatha Dé Danann deities, because there are a number of different figures who go by this name in the literature, and at least some of them appear to be referring to the exact same goddess. Only one or two of them is explicitly described as a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, while the others are depicted as belonging to the Nemedians (distant ancestors of the Tuatha Dé Danann and a previous wave of settlers in Ireland, who lived there long before the Tuatha Dé Danann or the Milesians), or else there’s Macha Mongrúad – portrayed as a legendary Irish queen who clearly takes on the rôle of a non-Tuatha Dé Danann sovereignty goddess, too.39
Then we have examples of gods like Donn, Dáire, Balor (maybe), Fergus Mór, and Bairrche, who may be described as ancestors of certain population groups or dynasties; in the case of Bairrche, he is an ancestral figure of the Uí Bairrche, and his divinity is also suggested in a comparative sense, from a Romano-British inscription found in Carlisle, which refers to a god M(ARTI) BARREKI.40 Some of these figures may not be as well known as many of the members Tuatha Dé Danann, but that hardly makes them any less divine than the members of the Tuatha Dé Danann might be.
So the idea of the Tuatha Dé Danann isn’t meant to be a blanket term for the gods of Ireland as a whole – they shouldn’t be thought of as a cohesive pantheon, because when all is said and done, the number of non-Tuatha Dé Danann deities probably outweighs the number of Tuatha Dé Danann deities to a significant degree. This point is also reinforced by the fact that when we look at the Tuatha Dé Danann more closely, quite a few of them don’t appear to have much of an existence at all. Figures like Alduí, Indui, and Tat are only ever mentioned in association with the Tuatha Dé Danann in a genealogical capacity, for example. They never appear in the stories as characters or individuals in their own right, and their presence as within the literature as a whole correlates precisely with the earliest uses of the name ‘Tuatha Dé Danann’ itself, which only appears in the literature from the very late tenth century, or possibly the early eleventh century, onwards (see note 38 below).
When we look at the literature as a whole it’s quite apparent that the medieval Irish scribes weren’t shy about adding ‘new’ members of the Tuatha Dé Danann when it suited them. From around the thirteenth century, in particular, we start to find the ranks of the Tuatha Dé Danann swelling quite massively, and while we have to wonder if some of them (a small number) may have just been relatively obscure or may have been otherwise overlooked up to that point, the vast majority of them are likely to be relatively modern inventions.41
The figure of Lir is a case in point here. Although Manannán mac Lir is a familiar and well-loved deity, his ‘patroymic’ – mac Lir, or ‘son of the Sea’ – isn’t actually a patronymic at all. Or perhaps to be more precise, it wasn’t meant to have been to start with. Instead, it started out as a sort of metaphorical way of referring to Manannán’s ‘profession’ as a sailor (as it’s described in the literature), which is presumably a reflection of one of the most common ways of describing his divine nature, as a ‘god of the sea.’ His so-called father, Lir, doesn’t start to appear in the literature, as a figure in his own right (separate from references to Manannán mac Lir), until the thirteenth century or so, and even then he’s not an especially significant presence. Looking at the evidence as a whole, it’s been suggested that Lir’s late appearance in the literature may have been a direct result of a misunderstanding of Manannán’s surname; after a time, mac Lir could have come to be understood as an actual patronymic, rather than a metaphorical description of Manannán’s strongest association, with the sea. This sort of misunderstanding could have been accidental – the result of simple ignorance – or it could have been something the scribes chose to deliberately misinterpret, so they could then ‘invent’ a new character that had the appearance of ancient, authentic roots, while distancing Manannán from his divinity at the same time.42
That Lir is an artificial presence in the literature is shown by the fact that the earlier sources do give Manannán a father, and it’s most certainly not Lir. Instead, the extensive genealogies of the various members of the Tuatha Dé Danann that can be found in The Book of Invasions describe him as the son of a figure by the name of Allóid (or Alloth, Elloth, or Allod, and variations on those themes). This Allóid is said to be a brother to the Dagda, Bres, Ogma, and Delbáeth (the father of Bóand), and although he doesn’t appear in any of the myths as a character in his own right it’s possible he may really have been a god; as R. A. S. Macalister has pointed out, the name ALOTTO is attested on an ogam inscription, which may represent an early (Archaic Irish) form of the god’s name. If that’s the case, then it appears that Allóid’s name may derive from the same root as the Old Irish word allaid, meaning ‘wild,’43 although under the circumstances we might again have to wonder if the name here is referring to a literal relationship, or a metaphorical one (just like mac Lir). As the father of Manannán – the so-called god of the sea – being given these ‘wild’ origins is very apt, because the seas are hardly tame, are they? It must be said, however, that their description as father and son is again rather late – only attested from around the tenth century onwards, when scribes began to take an interest in describing the Tuatha Dé Danann’s relationships in details, and giving them a genealogy that ultimately described them as the descendants of the Biblical Adam and Eve. The connection between Manannán and Allóid may or may not have been invented as part of that process; we simply don’t know.
There are plenty of other examples we could point to here, and sticking with Manannán for a moment we might also note the huge array of children he accumulates over time, not to mention his own (alleged) siblings from his father ‘Lir,’ who only appear in the story of Oidheadh Chloinne Lir (‘The Fate of the Children of Lir’) – a tale that can only be dated to the mid-fifteenth century at the very earliest, and which is obviously Christian in tone and content.44
It’s questionable as to whether this story is really a myth – with any real pre-Christian origins, anyway – but then end result here is that we have Lir and four further children of his all being described as a part of the Tuatha Dé Danann. None of them can be described as gods, though, despite the fact that figures who do seem to have had actual divine roots also make an appearance in the tale.
All of this raises an important question, then: If membership amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann doesn’t guarantee that a figure must, therefore be a god or goddess, how can we tell who is or isn’t actually divine?
The answer to this isn’t very short or simple, and it can’t necessarily give us anything absolutely definitive, but this is where we come back to the matter at hand: talking about how Comparative Studies can help us. Besides the few elements we’ve already touched on – like looking at the meaning of a name like Lóigde or the Dagda, which literally describes them both as gods – one thing we can do is look for ‘cognates.’ A cognate is where two or more words in different languages, with the same (or similar) meaning, can be traced back to the same linguistic root (a Proto-Celtic or Proto-Indo-European root, for example). As an example here, we could point back to our discussion of the sun, and its relation to sight or seeing, as relating to an Indo-European creation motif: the Greek helios, Latin sol, and Old Irish súil are all cognates, because they are all derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *sāwel-.
The names of quite a few mythological figures from Irish literature can be seen to have one or more cognates from other Celtic cultures. When we can identify cognate figures, then, this suggests that the individuals in question might share a common origin – that they are, ultimately, expressions of the same mythological figure, like a god or a hero, perhaps. When we know a cognate from another culture was understood to have been a deity, this makes it more likely that their Irish counterpart is therefore also going to be a deity, too. In effect, the names may be traced back to a single, original Proto-Celtic form, suggesting the deities themselves evolved from a single, original, Proto-Celtic version.
As the very first Celts began to spread, and their language, culture, and religion was adopted by people in different areas, these deities came to be known by a range of different peoples, who came to interpret them in their own unique ways. Over time, as the Proto-Celtic language that had been introduced into a specific area began to evolve along separate lines from the Proto-Celtic people of a different area, it wasn’t just the language that began to evolve into something new: so did their cultural and religious expressions. As these new, more localised Celtic cultures emerged, so did their own, more culturally specific versions of the gods. At their core, these cultures may have shared the same original deities, but ultimately their interpretation of those deities became something that was distinct from one another.
Of course, the fact that we can identify cognates doesn’t prove the divinity of either figure, in and of itself; it just tells us that these names share a common origin. It’s the context these names are found in that’s important here. Ireland was never conquered by Rome, but a huge swathe of Celtic Europe was, and as a result of this conquest the Celtic cultures who were subsumed into the Roman empire often became Romanised to some degree or another. As this Romanisation became more and more pronounced, Roman-style approaches melded with the native ways of doing things, and of course this would include their approach to religious practice. Throughout the Romanised world, we see local cultures embracing Roman-style temples, with Roman-style altars, and so on, and the Romanised Celts were no different. On top of all this, we might also find records of population groups (‘tribal names’) who named themselves after that of a god or goddess, and place-names – just as we see in Ireland. Thanks to this Roman influence on the local religious practices, then, the Gauls, the Britons, and the Celtiberians (to name just a few) left record the names of many of their deities, in some form or another. In a similar vein, we also find some cognates in Welsh myth, where these mythological figures may function in the same sort of way as their Irish counterpart.
From the inscriptions alone, we now know the names of at least 400 deities of Celtic origin who were venerated across a large part of the Celtic continent, and the parts of Britain that came under Roman control. We find their names on altar dedications, curse tablets (defixio), in temples that were dedicated to them, or (occasionally) we see them being described by Classical authors. The Gaulish Ogmios – thought to be a cognate of the Irish Ogma – is a good example here. In some cases, as with Néit or Brigit, their divinity isn’t just implied by the simple fact that they might have identifiable cognates from other parts of the Celtic world, but they’re also explicitly addressed as deities within the Irish literature itself. As such, if we compare these known, confirmed Celtic deity names with the evidence we have from Ireland, we might end up with a pretty good idea of which of the Irish ‘gods’ really are likely to represent deities. When we consider this sort of evidence, then, to suggest that the Irish cognate of a Gaulish, Brythonic, or Celtiberian (etc.) deity couldn’t be similarly divine would take some serious mental gymnastics.
Perhaps the best known example of an Irish god with Celtic cognates is Lug (in modern Irish: Lugh; in Gaelic: Lùgh), whose name is cognate with the Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes (attested in Welsh mythology like the Mabingion), and the Gaulish Lugus (attested in a number of inscriptions, with significant ties to the Gallo-Roman city of Lugdunum, or Lyons, as it’s known today). As cognates, this tells us that each of these names is derived from a common source – the Proto-Celtic form *Lugus – although it doesn’t really tell us anything about where this god may have originated, or how he ended up in the places he eventually did, or when any of this might have happened, or over what period of time.45
Whatever the case may be, due to the way in which the different Celtic cultures evolved – branching off from those Proto-Celtic origins – we can’t say these cognates are the ‘same’ deities. What applies to Lleu or Lugus doesn’t necessarily, automatically apply to Lug, for the simple fact that as each of these cultures diverged from one another, becoming ever more distinct and separate over time, as did their beliefs, and their understanding of their gods. In some respects things probably weren’t all that different, either, but we can’t bank on that. The details matter.
Another example of a cognate – with a slightly more limited area of influence – is the Irish Núadu, who can be identified with the Romano-British Nodons (or Nodens), and the later Welsh figures Nudd, and Lludd Llaw Ereint. These may all be derived from a Proto-Celtic form *Noudons or *Noudōs, depending on how the meaning of these names might be explained; there’s no real consensus here, so it’s difficult to make any definitive conclusions (unfortunately). Either way, though, the Romano-British deity Nodons represents the oldest known Celtic counterpart for Núadu. Most of what we know about Nodons comes from a fourth century Romano-British temple that was built overlooking the river Severn, at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire (close to the Welsh border), and situated in the area that was once occupied by the Brythonic kingdom of the Silures. Looking at the evidence of Nodons’ cult, from excavations that were carried out at the temple, we can find quite a few areas of agreement with what we know of Núadu from Irish literature, although there are plenty of differences, too. The evidence from both Nodons and Lludd Llaw Ereint (or Lludd ‘of the Silver Hand’ – a direct counterpart to Núadu’s epithet Airgetlám, or ‘Silver Hand/Arm’) gives us tantalising glimpses as to how Núadu may have once been seen, and the obviously divine nature of Nodons himself means we can be fairly confident in suggesting that Núadu was most certainly seen as a god, too.46
Other examples of cognates include the Irish Néit, who may be identified with a Celtiberian counterpart in the form of a deity by the name of Niethos (or Netos), while one of his wives, Badb (sometimes called Badb Catha, which means ‘Battle Crow’), has a Gaulish cognate in the form of a deity by the name of Cathubodua. Goibniu, who has an obvious Welsh counterpart in the form of Gofannon, also has a number of Gaulish cognates attested in the form of Gobano, or Deo Cobanno, which have been found on a number of Gallo-Roman inscriptions. In the nominative case, this would give us the name of a Gaulish god known as Gobannos (or Cobannos). Linguistically, this group of names can be traced back to the same Proto-Celtic root, *gob-ens, meaning ‘smith,’ and both Goibniu and Gofannon are indeed portrayed as smiths. The Proto-Celtic form of these divine names is *Gobanonnos. Similarly, the Irish Manannán mac Lir claims an obvious Welsh counterpart in the form of Manawydan fab Llŷr.47
Another possible cognate is suggested by the similarities between the names of the Irish Ogma and the Gaulish Ogmios (as we touched on earlier), although it should be said that some linguists find the connection a little dubious (the argument basically boils down to ‘we don’t think Ogmios would become Ogma in Irish, because the name shouldn’t have evolved like that; the vowels are “wrong” so they probably aren’t related?’).48 The name of Nia Segamain (or Nia Segamon) is attested in the early Irish literature where he’s described as a son of Flidais (who may be a goddess in her own right), but we also find an earlier form of his name carved in ogam where it takes the form of NETA-SEGAMONAS. This suggests a meaning of ‘Champion of the Strong One,’ where SEGAMONAS is clearly cognate with a Gaulish deity, Segomoni.49 The first element of his name, NETA or Nia, is also derived from the same linguistic root as Néit’s name, which may suggest implications of some sort of common origin between the Irish Néit, the Gaulish Segomoni, and the Celtiberian Niethos/Netos. Either way, however, if Nia Segamain isn’t a deity himself, his name surely references one.
A slightly less obvious cognate is Óengus, the son of the Dagda and Bóand. He is often called Óengus mac Óc (‘Oengus son of Young’) or Óengus mac Ind Óc (‘Óengus son of the Young’), and it’s his epithet – not his first name – that brings us to his cognates in the form of Maponos (attested in inscriptions from Gaul and Britain) and the (later) Welsh Mabon, son of Modron, where they are all thought to derive from a Proto-Celtic form, *makʷkʷonos, meaning ‘The Divine Son.’50
Nearly all of the names we’ve touched on here are well-known figures in Irish myth – with the exception of Manannán’s ‘original’ father, Allóid, perhaps, so for the most part even if they didn’t have cognates we’d still be fairly confident in describing them as divinities. As Allóid’s example suggests, however, that ‘recognition’ factor isn’t a good reason – in and of itself – to assume that a mythological figure must, therefore, be divine.
Besides cognates, or names that contain an explicit reference to their being a ‘god’ or ‘goddess,’ there is another linguistic element we can look for in these names, which can help in distinguishing theonyms (a fancy word for ‘deity names’). In Celtic languages as a whole, the early forms of theonyms often include what linguists call an ‘individualising suffix,’ where the name ends with -onos (or -ona, -on-). This suffix is often most obvious in Gaulish deity names, like Cernunnos, Epona, Belenos, Rudianos, or Damona, and (as we saw earlier) the Gaulish or Romano-British cognates for Núadu, Goibniu and Óengus Mac ind Óc – Nodons, Gobannos, and Maponos. This individualising suffix explicitly marks the names out as referring to a divine being (although some linguists will extend its meaning to encompass ‘mythological’ names in general, as in the case of Fionn).51 The suffix isn’t necessarily always present, but when it is it gives us a fairly unequivocal idea that we are indeed looking at an actual deity.
This individualising suffix is not as obvious in the Irish divine names, in the forms we know today – as they’re attested in the Old or Middle Irish literature, up to the present day. As we saw in the Linguistics section, as Primitive Irish was evolving to become Old Irish (making a brief stop at Archaic Irish along the way), the language underwent some changes, the first of which being apocope: the loss of the final syllable (case ending). The advent of apocope marks the transition from Primitive Irish to Archaic Irish (or the very earliest form of Old Irish, depending on who you ask). With the loss of the case endings that had previously been so obvious in Primitive Irish, the individualising suffix – the case ending that explicitly marked out names as referring to a divine being – essentially disappeared at a very early stage in the written history of Irish.
So Irish did once have this individualising suffix, it’s just not something we tend to see, except on the very rare occasion that we might find an early example of an ogam inscription where the suffix is obvious. An example we’ve already seen here is the name of NETA-SEGAMONAS, which becomes Nia Segamain in its Old Irish form. In the latter form the individualising suffix has obviously disappeared, but we still sometimes might see a hint of it in a spelling that’s occasionally used, Nia Segamon.
All in all then, the cognates and the hints of divine suffixes we can find in the comparative sources can be incredibly useful in confirming the question of divine origins for certain figures who appear in the literature, which is especially useful when we start to encounter characters who don’t appear to be all that old, or may be rather obscure. Of course, however, this fact in itself isn’t the be all and end all of determining the authenticity of literary figures, but that’s a longer discussion for a different day.
The value of the sort of information we can glean from Comparative Studies is in the generalities and the background it can provide. It can help give us a solid footing in the basics, letting us know what we should or could expect to find – assuming that some sort of comparable evidence is to be found at all. We can’t rely on this sort of approach too heavily, of course; there’s always the risk that we might ignore evidence that doesn’t fit our preconceived notions, or that we might make a bigger deal of the evidence that does fit our expectations than is really warranted. In focusing on the similarities between the various Indo-European cultures, we also risk losing sight of what makes them all unique in their own way. We cannot talk about culture without describing their uniqueness, really. We have to be clear that comparable evidence from different cultures can’t simply be lifted wholesale and then plonked into any gaps in our knowledge, and given a Gaelic veneer to make it look more authentic. As much as it might be tempting to try and invent an ‘Irish blót‘ (a Norse ritual involving a blood sacrifice, or the sharing of a drink), or a ‘Gaelic katharmos‘ (a Greek ritual of purification and cleansing, to rid oneself of miasma, which refers to a concept of ritual impurity), and so forth, we just can’t. Ritualised forms of sacrifice, the sharing of a drink with toasts and blessings, or rites of purification, might all be found in the pre-Christian religions of the Gaels, as well as these other cultures, but that only tells us the basic principles involved share a common origin. It doesn’t mean we can take a ritual or ceremony and simply translate it into another language while slapping on some suitably swirly triskeles and the like. That would just give us a translation of another culture’s ritual, with some bastardisations thrown in.
When it comes to the specifics, we need to look to within the Gaelic cultures themselves, not outside them.
References
38 *Danu is a hypothetical name – a reconstructed form of a name. This is because the name “Danu” never appears in the literature – not written in this particular way (indicating the name as it should be in the nominative case). In all of the Gaelic languages, the spelling and pronunciation of a name will change depending on the grammatical context it’s being used in. With *Danu’s name we only ever see it appearing in the genitive case, which is Danann (meaning ‘of *Danu‘), regardless of whether or not the name actually needs to be given in the genitive. This may suggest that the scribes weren’t familiar with a figure by the name of *Danu, and so they didn’t know how to decline it properly (i.e. change the grammatical case in an appropriate manner), or perhaps because they knew it wasn’t a ‘proper’ name, they didn’t feel the need to treat it in a ‘proper’ manner. As a result, they may have stuck with the form they already knew, or the specific form in which the name was first encountered, which was Donann (becoming Danann a little later on, which then stuck). Either way, it was probably derived from the name of the Tuatha Dé Danann itself.
To be fair, however, over time it did become increasingly common for some names to become essentially ‘fossilised’ – where they basically became ‘stuck’ in a particular grammatical form, giving a more standardised approach. So just as they did with *Danu – giving as Danann, regardless of how it was being used in a sentence – the scribes wouldn’t always bother to decline a personal name, and when this happened they did often use the genitive form of the name as a sort of default spelling. Examples here include Anu or Ana (frequently called Anand or Anann – the -nd and -nn are pronounced the same, but -nd is the earlier form), Goibniu (increasingly being referred to as Goibnenn), and Oirbsiu (often referred to as Oirbsen/Orbsen), so we could just be seeing the same sort of treatment with *Danu here. If that’s the case, however, this is an early example, by comparison, and it is a bit suspicious that we never see the nominative used, ever.
The earliest appearances of *Danu are directly linked to the earliest uses of the name ‘Tuatha Dé Danann’ in the literature, as well, which suggests that she was ‘created’ for the purposes of coining a name for the gods – one that would help distinguish them more easily. Before the name ‘Tuatha Dé Danann’ was adopted, the scribes often referred to them as the Tuath Dé (‘People of Gods’), but this name was also used as a way of referring to the Israelites (where Tuath Dé would then mean ‘People of God,’ instead). Obviously the fact that this name was being used for two very different things could be incredibly confusing, and that was probably precisely the point (to begin with), because the early scribes often embraced any opportunity to insert their own history (or pseudo-history) into a Biblical framework or context. They wanted to link the Israelites – God’s chosen – with their own people, their own past. Over time, however, this sort of attitude seems to have changed, and so by the late tenth century, or early eleventh, we start to see the name of the Tuatha Dé Danann appearing for the first time. It seems to have caught on quickly after that, and became the standard.
Considering all of this, then, there are a number of theories on where *Danu’s name may have come from. It may represent a garbled attempt at describing the gods as the ‘The People of the Gods of Skill,’ where *Danu was really meant to have been dána (‘skill, art’). This would make sense, given the number of deities we see who are explicitly associated with some sort of profession, not to mention the fact that we see a group of the gods being called the trí déi dána (‘three gods of skill’) in some of the early sources, which later became trí déi Dana(nn) (three gods of *Danu‘). As with Anu, the pronunciation of *Danu would have sounded a lot like dana, and in Anu’s case we do see this reflected in the way that her name may be given as Ana, as well – the two spellings being interchangeable (there was no real standardised approach to spelling at this point, so the spelling of a name could vary quite a lot even within the same paragraph, written by a single author). Seeing as Anu becomes Anann in the genitive, this may also have only encouraged the nominative form of Ana as opposed to Anu. The accent in dána, unlike *Danu, however, does give a slightly different pronunciation to the way *Danu should sound, but again, accents weren’t consistently used, even when their absence could alter the meaning of a sentence quite drastically, by suggesting a different word – same spelling, no accent, very different meaning – was intended). In fact, *Donu would be a bit closer to dána, and to begin with, as the name of the Tuatha Dé evolved, they were initially called the Tuatha Dé Donann. It only became Danann about a century later, though once it did it quickly became the preferred form..
Alternatively, Anu herself may have had a part to play in all of this. According to our sources, Anu is a goddess who appears to have strong connections to the Munster area. It’s possible that the name of the Tuatha Dé Danann was originally intended to have referred to her – the ‘People of the Goddess Anu.’ Irish doesn’t like two vowels together, as ‘Tuatha Dé Anann’ would necessarily give, because it sounds clumsy. As a result – assuming Anu was being referenced – an initial d would have been added before Anu’s name, to give a better flow. In this case, though, the name should be written as Tuatha Dé dAnann (not Danann). If this name was only heard orally, however, a scribe could be forgiven for getting a bit confused and assuming it was meant to be Tuatha Dé Danann.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation here. The medieval Irish loved their word play, and so both of these explanations could have been a factor in the choice of ‘Donann’ (and then ‘Danann’) in relation to the name of the Tuatha Dé Danann. It’s possible that dána was an initial influence (if not the initial influence), resulting in the name Donann, but visually speaking Danann would give a closer fit to dána and Anu.
Yet another possibility is that Danann was really meant to be Domnann, or that it was based on that name, where the middle ‘m’ was either deliberately or accidentally dropped. The name Domnann appears in a variety of different contexts, and it may relate to the Dumnonii, one of the people-names described on Ptolemy’s map of Ireland. They appear to have been located in the Leinster area, which is precisely where the pseudo-historical sources locate the Fir Domnann, who are sometimes said to have been one of the groups who arrived in Ireland alongside the Fir Bolg and the Galioin.
The word Domnann derives from the Celtic root dumno-, or dubno-, which can mean ‘deep’ and ‘the world,’ and as John Koch has pointed out, the name clearly (originally) contained the divine suffix -on-, which we’ll get to in a minute back in the main portion of the page. As the Tuatha Dé ‘Domnann,’ then, they would have been ‘The Peoples of the Gods of the World/Deep,’ where both interpretations could make equal sense. This argument would at least better explain why the earliest spellings of ‘Danann’ give Donann.
For a discussion of what *Danu may actually have been referring to, see John Carey’s ‘The Name Túatha Dé Danann,’ in Éigse 18:2 (1981), and Eric Hamp’s ‘The Dag(h)d(h)ae and his Relatives,’ in L. Sawicki and D. Shalev (Eds.), Donum Grammaticum: Studies in Latin and Celtic Linguistics in Honour of Hannah Rosén (Orbis Supplementa Tome 18) (2002). Hamp offers a different interpretation of Danann, as deriving from dṷnon-om, which would refer to the ‘Nobles/Upper Classes’ (and so Tuatha Dé Danann would mean ‘Peoples of the God of the Nobles/Upper Classes’). Given the frequent explanation that’s given for the dée ocus andée, where the gods are described as being the áes dána (‘people of skill’) as opposed to the un-gods, who are the áes trebtha (‘farmer’s) this does seem suggestive.
For an overview of Domnann, see John Koch (Ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), 750.
39 See: Gregory Toner, ‘Macha and the invention of myth,’ in Ériu 60 (2010), 81–109.
40 Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin and Paul Byrne, ‘Prosopography I: Kings named in Baile Chuinn Chéthchathaig and The Airgíalla Charter Poem,’ in Edel Bhreathnach (Ed.), The Kingship and Landscape of Tara (2005), 169.
41 In particular, see: Mark Williams’s Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016).
42 Mark Williams Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), 254-258; John Carey, The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature (2018), 54.
43 R.A.S. Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland Part IV (1941), 99; 128-129; Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991), 106; 126. Names on ogam stones are often given in the genitive case, so the connection between ALOTTO/ALATTO is clearer when we consider the genitive form of allaid — alta. See: http://edil.qub.ac.uk/2930
44 Mark Williams Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), 515.
45 John Koch (Ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), 1203.
Brythonic (or Brittonic) is the ancient ancestor of modern Welsh, amongst other languages that were spoken in Britain and parts of France. The theoretical common ancestor of all Brythonic languages is typically referred to as Common Brythonic. It is believed to have split off into two main sub-groups – a ‘Western Brythonic’ group (encompassing Welsh and Cumbric, the latter of which was once spoken across parts of northern England, into south and central Scotland, up until the twelfth century or so), and a ‘Southwestern Brythonic’ group (encompassing Breton and Cornish). Although Pictish is now believed to have been a Brythonic language as well, there’s very little consensus on its origins. It may have evolved directly from Common Brythonic, either forming its own linguistic group alongside the Western and Southwestern Brythonic branches, or else it may have been a part of the Western Brythonic group, together with Welsh and Cumbric.
No Brythonic myths have survived (i.e. myths written in that language, from the Brythonic period). We only have myths that were written down in a much later period, written in an early form of Welsh (another descendant of Brythonic, like Pictish).
46 See John Carey, ‘Nodons in Britain and Ireland,’ in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 40 (1984).
47 William Hennessy, ‘The Ancient Irish Goddess of War,’ in Revue Celtique 1 (1870); John Koch, Common Ground and Progress on the Celtic of the South-Western (S.W.) Inscriptions (2019), 74; Almagro-Gorbea, ‘Una Probable Divinidad Tartésica Identificada: NIETHOS/NETOS,’ in Palaeohispanica 2 (2002), 46; 50-51; Václav Blažek, ‘Celtic “Smith” and His Colleagues,’ in Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics Volume 32 (2008), 69-70; 79; John Koch (Ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), 1245.
48 John Koch (Ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), 1393.
49 Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991), 110; Michael Weiss, ‘An Italo-Celtic Divinity and a Common Sabellic Sound Change,’ in Classical Antiquity 36:2 (2017), 370.
50 Eric Hamp, ‘Mabinogi,’ in Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion: Session 1974 and 1975 (1975), 245; John Koch (Ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), 1259.
51 Eric Hamp, ‘Mabinogi,’ in Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion: Session 1974 and 1975 (1975), 245; Tim de Goede, Derivational Morphology: New Perspectives on the Italo-Celtic Hypothesis (2014), 38; Eric Hamp, ‘Varia II,’ in Ériu 29 (1978), 152.
Eòlas 